Watermarks

A Herald and News special report: Part 1

February 15, 2008

   Watermarks. The history of this community is the record of its river systems and water supplies. Since settlers immigrated into the Basin in the 19th century, there are a multitude of historical dates, many denoting progress, many spelling grief. The first irrigation in the 1880s. The beginning of the Klamath Project in 1905. Homesteading opening to World War I veterans in 1922. More recently, the 2001 Klamath Water Crisis. The 2002 Klamath River fish die-off.

And now release of the 2008 Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement intended to prevent future crises and confrontations. Some laud it; some condemn it. No one, it is agreed, gets everything they’d like. Many are enthusiastic. “If we do this right, we can get off the front of the newspapers,” says Troy Fletcher of the Yurok Tribe. 

   Others, such as many off-Project water users, those farmers and ranchers who rely on water for their operations but who are not included in the historic Bureau of Reclamation project, believe it spells disaster.

Jess Prosser fills the first bucket in the Klamath Bucket Brigade in 2001.

Participants in the 2001 bucket brigade protest on Main Street . Klamath Indians drying suckers beside Lost River near Klamath Falls .

Klamath Indians drying suckers beside Lost River near Klamath Falls .

Klamath County Veterans Service Officer Ted Case draws a number from the pickle jar in a 1949 homestead drawing. Homesteader

Two men walk along an irrigation ditch in this undated photo.

Ty Kliewer waits for an irrigation line to drain in one of his family’s alfalfa fields in the Klamath Basin after water was turned on to the A Canal in 2001.

Photo Credit:  Klamath County Museum , U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Herald and News file, U.S.
Fish and Wildlife

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